In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together butter, sugars and peanut butter until smooth and creamy. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla, beating until well combined. Add dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Form the dough into 32 balls.

To prepare the filling

In a medium bowl, mix together confectioners' sugar, peanut butter and salt until smooth. Form into 32 balls.

Working on a silpat or piece of parchment, gently flatten each chocolate ball. Top each round with a peanut butter ball, then carefully fold chocolate dough over the peanut butter ball and seal the edges. Roll dough into a ball.

Place balls on a parchment or silpat-lined baking sheet. Lightly flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in the remaining 2 tablespoons granulated sugar.

Place pans into the oven and bake until the surface of the cookies begins to slightly crack, about 8 minutes. Remove and allow cookies to cool for 1 minute on the baking sheet. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

I made a similar cookie last night from the King Arthur Cookie cookbook (Magic in the Middles). The chocolate dough was very stiff and cracked when trying to form the cookies. They really cracked when I flattened them.

I'm wondering if the addition of the 1 Tablespoon of milk would help? I'm also wondering if I used too much flour. The KA cookbook recommends 4.25 oz of flour per cup. I've been using 5 oz per cup for ages and have had good luck. I may try the 4.25 oz measure next time to see it this helps. Was the chocolate dough in your recipe very stiff?

Anyway, I found your wonderful site through these cookies. I've been looking for a recipe for these and found your image on Flickr. I love your blog and read it all the time. :)

Syl - I don't remember my recipe being too stiff at all and you can see they didn't crack much.

As far as the weight goes - if you are following a KA recipe, definitely use the weight of flour they give. They formulate their recipes for the 4.25 per/cup (depending on what kind of flour you use) - too much flour can really impact the end results. Some people do the "scoop and sweep" method which will result in the 5oz per/cup though.

I've been making these cookies for years! They are seriously the most delectable cookies you will ever taste! but I have been following a recipe out of a magazine. This year i went to get the recipe, and can't find the Magazine!!! THANKS so much for posting this! i don't know what i would've done without it!

I love anything with a chocolate and peanut butter combination, and these are fantastic! Not to mention I had fun making them...Weird thing though, I missed the butter addition too, I had to reread the directions about 4 times til I read it.

I just made these cookies, the only thing was that they took way longer than 8 minutes for me to cook...I don't know, maybe my oven just sucks. xD Anyways, they just came out and look delicious, I can't wait to try them. Thanks for posting this!

Hello there :) I found this post the other day, and just had to try it. They worked beautifully! I even blogged about it - you can find the post here: http://10here10there.blogspot.com/2010/06/peanut-butter-filled-chocolate-cookies.html This recipe is definately a keeper in my house now - love it!

I made these and everyone loved them. They looked almost exactly like the picture. The only real difference is we only made about 12. We couldn't even imagine trying to make 32!! out of that amount of dough. I guess we just like large cookies. I do wish for everyone to note. I made these a second time with crunchy peanut butter and it made a HUGE difference in the dough and turn out of the cookie. The dough was harder to work with and you had to keep your hands completely wet (as if working with sushi rice) as well as the cup used to sugar the cookies and a few minutes after they got out of the oven they flattened. Stick to regular/creamy peanut butter or use less wet ingredients so it isn't as sticky/runny. Besides that...WONDERFUL cookies! The hot chocolate ones are up next!

Omg, they are delicious, even here in Germany! Since we don't have the cup measures it was a bit difficult to transfer it into grmas, so I used too much flour which resulted in cracking dough, and the peanut butter filling ran out a bit. Still, they are super delicious. As a tip: Don't give them away too much, people will request them for birthdays, family parties, christmas etc etc......